Some Texas Schools Teaching Boston Tea Party Was Terrorism

It has been revealed that some Texas schools were teaching that the Boston Tea Party, an event widely understood as having helped spark the American Revolution, was actually a “terrorist” attack on British authorities.

At least up until January of 2012, Texas schools utilizing the history curriculum from CSCOPE, a non-profit and supposedly non-partisan education service, taught that the most famous tax protest in American history was akin to terrorism.

The tact taken to discuss the event was to engage kids as if the Boston Tea Party had just occurred and was a current news report.

News report: New Act of Terrorism

A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.

The teacher’s guide instructed teachers to judge the Boston Tea Party by “the criteria of a terrorist attack” and told teachers to ask kids if they thought the event was a terrorist attack.

Do you think that in the eyes of the British that the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist activity? Why or why not? Were the colonists justified in taking this action due to their beliefs? is anyone ever justified in committing these types of activities? What drives people to do this type of activity? These are the things that we will explore further.

As The Blaze reports, this anti-American lesson plan was also barred from parents’ view in contradiction to the Texas State constitution that maintains that parents have a right to access the materials that teachers are using to educate their children.

At this point, there is some confusion as to whether or not this lesson plan is still in use, but there isn’t much question that it once was.

As to whether or not the Boston Tea Party was really an act of terrorism, it is hard to claim that a protest over taxes that targeted only merchandise — and not people or property (buildings/homes) — fits the normal definition of what an act of terrorism is today.

By defining the Boston Tea Party as terrorism, wouldn’t that make any civil unrest an act of terrorism? And in a nation built on personal freedom and a questioning of power, would that be the best message to send?

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com.
Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston and follow him on Twitter, on Google Plus , and Facebook.